Thread: How smart are you(we)?

This test has been around for a long time and I'm sure that there are many of us that have seen it before. If so, please don't divulge where it came from for a few days so everyone that hasn't seen it has a chance to give it a whirl.

I saw this for the first time today and gave it a go. Took 15 minutes. It has been said that a great percent of the population can not answer it correctly. Lets prove them wrong.

Give it a try. If you get an answer please don't post it. Just post how lnog it took you to solve it. I'll post the answer Sunday evening if I can remember. I'm getting old ya know. If I forget ya'll are welcome to post the answer after say 7pm EST Sunday 12/6/09.

Thanks for playing along.

Here's the test:

There's only one solution for this problem.

There are 5 houses of 5 different colors.
In each house lives a person of a different nationality.
Those 5 people drink different drinks, smoke cigarettes of a different brand and have a different pet.
None of them has the same pet, smokes the same cigarette or drinks the same drink.
Question: Who has the fish?

Hints:

The englishman lives in the red house.
The swedish has a dog as a pet.
The Dane drinks tea.
The green house is at the left side of the white one.
The person who lives at the green house drinks coffee.
The person who smokes Pall Mall raises birds.
The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
The man that lives in the house that is in the middle drinks milk.
The norwegian lives in the first house.
The man that smokes Blends lives next to the one that has cats.
The man that raises horses lives next to the one that smokes Dunhill.
The man that smokes Bluemaster drinks beer.
The german smokes Prince.
The norwegian lives next to the blue house.
The man that smokes Blends is neighbour of the one that drinks water.

Do give it a go before looking for the answer somewhere else.

Good luck!!

I believe this is Einsteins problem. He is said to have said that only 2% of people in the world are smart enough to solve it.

I did it a long time a ago by drawing out a table, but don't want to do it all again now...

PM sent about an hour ago.

Making a table helps. I actually needed two tables -- one to construct the "answer" (who/what goes with which house) and one to represent relationships. The relationships can then be looked at to see where in the answer table they fit. Look for a sure thing, put it in the answer table, then another sure thing will show up. Actually I sometimes needed to lightly pencil in a couple of hypotheticals then something would come along that made only one of the hypotheticals possible.

I'm dumb as a post... besides that there is too much second hand smoke in that neighborhood. My guess is the fish would have died a long time ago.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I'm dumb as a post... besides that there is too much second hand smoke in that neighborhood. My guess is the fish would have died a long time ago.

LOL, I have two dogs and two parakeets that don't seem to mind the smoke, especially cigars. The chocolate lab actually enjoys a good cigar with me!

Besides, the question doesn't state that the fish is alive!

TexasBob got the answer in 20 minutes. Thanks for not posting the answer.

I like puzzles. As a Systems Analyst I get mental puzzles all day, day in and day out. I thought this one was fun!

OK here's a dumb one.

If a chicken and a half
lays an egg and a half
in a day and a half
how long does it take a dozen chickens
to lay a dozen eggs?

it's a glorified sudoku, my time to solve it was 26min 47s, and in the past I've done 3 sudoku puzzles.

I found an answer, but didn't remember to time myself. But I think it took a bit over 20 minutes, went a lot quicker once I found a system
PM sent

Originally Posted by TexasBob

OK here's a dumb one.

If a chicken and a half
lays an egg and a half
in a day and a half
how long does it take a dozen chickens
to lay a dozen eggs?

1500 beats, and don't tell me you've stopped beating your chicken...

Originally Posted by Joed

LOL, I have two dogs and two parakeets that don't seem to mind the smoke, especially cigars.

Talking of parakeets: try typing "why won't my" in google and take a look on the first suggestion